Religion Dispatches
…the New Atheists—seems to go to the strongly oppositional or even antagonistic stories. There seem to be a lot of stipulations put into those atheist narratives. Some would make it so that you have to be completely on board with point X, Y, and Z in order to even count as an atheist. As a former fundamentalist Christian, I understand that impulse, but I am surprised by how pervasive it is within organized atheism. I read about a recent study of F…
Read More
…them engaged, because I don’t think you can change minds if your audience stops listening. This meant that I had to demonstrate that I respect their faith. At the same time, I wanted to challenge them to rethink some ideas about what goes into constructing a personal identity–perhaps even convincing them that personal and gender identity is a construction in the first place. Are you hoping to just inform readers? Entertain them? Piss them off? I…
Read More
…h all manner of political and ideological implications. Thus, there is a vested interest on the part of the religious and political right in keeping LGBT persons silent and subjugated. Whereas political rallying on issues like same-sex marriage and the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell serve to maintain some ground on the preservation of anti-gay cultural ideology, the intermittent reinforcement of violent attack is an even better tool to ensure the…
Read More
…ion talk show format, which Bakker pioneered with Pat Robertson at the Christian Broadcasting Network in the 1960s, PTL’s private satellite network, launched in 1978, a year before ESPN, and the theme park, Heritage USA. The Bakkers signature television show, the PTL Club, was broadcast live, five days a week, with little scripting. Tammy once did an episode on a merry-go-round. One cast member threw up in the dog costume he was wearing as they sp…
Read More
…h. After the federal withdrawal, conservatives quickly marshaled their racist street and electoral violence to end the possibility of Black political representation, heightening terrorism and formalizing apartheid in the southern regions of the colony despite promising to uphold newly-won civil rights for African Americans as part of the “Compromise.” Thus the lie that “we aren’t racist” proved useful in the furtherance of the white nationalist ca…
Read More
…and political commitments of many of today’s evangelicals have become so distasteful to their normative understanding of the faith as to render the term “evangelical” useless. As historian Thomas Kidd puts it in one of his reprinted essays, the invocation of the word evangelical “now basically means whites who consider themselves religious and vote Republican.” This “wholesale watering down and politicization” of the term, Kidd continues, suggesti…
Read More
…ly questioning a Christian’s experience of the Holy Spirit. But there were still many obstacles to navigate regarding the metaphysical claims of vampires. Of particular controversy was the existence of subtle energy or “psi,” which many vampires claim to feed on. Some of the vampires were quick to point out that I could not really understand their life-world if I dismissed the existence of subtle energy. By contrast, fellow scholars expressed conc…
Read More
…ve of Islam globally. Such Wahhabism, according to Salaymeh, is an “extremist strain” on the periphery of the Muslim community. “In a weird way,” she says, “the neo-cons are in dialogue with the extremists and are legitimating the extremists’ position by refusing to recognize that there are other interpretations of Islam and experiences of Islam that are not the Wahhabi one.” The Conspiracy Theorists: The Players The most recent public attacks on…
Read More…frame of conflict once more. Even with Pope Benedict’s visit to the United States last week, I was pleasantly surprised to see some fairly major coverage of the visit of another religious leader, the Aga Khan. He is the head of a Shi’ah community known as the Isma’ilis, who officially have 15-20 million members worldwide. CNN’s 360º Blog ran two pieces: one by Zarifmo Aslamshoyeva and one by Reza Aslan; OnFaith had a piece by Eboo Patel. There was…
Read More
…ntries studied, 32 (16%) have anti-blasphemy laws, 20 (10%) have laws against apostasy, and 87 (44%) have laws against the defamation of religion, including hate speech against religious groups. Pew has consistently documented that such laws, often publicly defended as being motivated by respect for religion, are actually correlated with the suppression of religion. Countries with more prohibitions against blasphemy, apostasy, and religious insult…
Read More